ing. With the first
stroke the trim shell of a thing shot out from the shore like an arrow.
There was not much to see. While we were on the shallow water of the
reef, it was pastime to look down into the limpid depths at the large
bunches of branching coral--the unique shrubbery of the sea. We lost
that, though, when we got out into the dead blue water of the deep.
But we had the picture of the surf, then, dashing angrily against the
crag-bound shore and sending a foaming spray high into the air.

There was interest in this beetling border, too, for it was honey-combed
with quaint caves and arches and tunnels, and had a rude semblance of the
dilapidated architecture of ruined keeps and castles rising out of the
restless sea. When this novelty ceased to be a novelty, we turned our
eyes shoreward and gazed at the long mountain with its rich green forests
stretching up into the curtaining clouds, and at the specks of houses in
the rearward distance and the diminished schooner riding sleepily at
anchor. And when these grew tiresome we dashed boldly into the midst of
a school of huge, beastly porpoises engaged at their eternal game of
arching over a wave and disappearing, and then doing it over again and
keeping it up--always circling over, in that way, like so many
well-submerged wheels. But the porpoises wheeled themselves away, and
then we were thrown upon our own resources. It did not take many minutes
to discover that the sun was blazing like a bonfire, and that the weather
was of a melting temperature. It had a drowsing effect, too. In one
place we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes and
all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of surf-bathing.
Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea, (taking
a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a particularly
prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would fling his
board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he would
come whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not seem that a lightning
express train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I tried
surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the
board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the
connection myself.--The board struck the shore in three quarters of a
second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time,
with a couple of barrels of water in